Vat=leeches

Friday, September 19, 2008

I slept in a bit this morning- I have been feeling like I have a cold or allergies. I hope it is just a cold because I don't want to be allergic to the forest! :) After breakfast we went into the forest to walk one of Jonathan's transects.

At first I was really confused about this, so I will explain it. Jonathan's transect is a straight line in the forest. It is 250 meters long and 8 meters wide (4 meters on each side of a center line). Last year Jonathan set up 3 transects- he marked off the line and put tags on any trees in the area that were bigger than 10 cm in circumference. We walked one of the transects to see if any of the tags needed to be replaced, and to see if we could find all of the trees. We will walk the transects 2 times each month to observe the trees: do they have leaves? Do they have flowers? Are there any fruits in the trees? This will be very useful when we start to observe the monkeys. We will follow them, watch what they are eating, and then try to gather samples. The monkeys, called Black-shanked doucs, are pretty shy, so it will take some time for them to get used to us.

It is the rainy season right now, which means that the forest is really muddy, and there are LOTS of leeches. At first I was afraid of them. All I knew of leeches came from watching Stand By Me-scary little things that stick to you and suck your blood. YIKES! But they are not that bad. I had one on my wrist the first day in the forest and I didn't even know it was there! They are pretty interesting and I am kind of curious about them. What do they do when it's not wet? What is a leech's life cycle like? When I have Google again I will have to investigate!! If you want to see some, check out the video below!